


[META] Getting to an non-hierarchical Aziraphale-Crowley relationship

by mecurtin



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Analysis, Dysfunctional Relationships, Egalitarian relationships, Essays, Fallen Angels, Footnotes, Heaven & Hell, Hierarchical relationships, M/M, Meta, Post-Canon, Religious Content, fanfic needed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 20:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19708405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mecurtin/pseuds/mecurtin
Summary: stellar_dust noticed that most A/C fanfic includes some status imbalance because Crowley is Fallen and Aziraphale is Unfallen. I wonder what it would take to get them to a truly egalitarian relationship, given that Heaven & Hell, in Good Omens, are two siblings in a dysfunctional, abusive family. By the end of Episode 6  Aziraphale+Crowley have cut ties with most of their abusive family (yay), but they haven't done the work to unlearn the toxic habits of thought it gave them. That's what fanfic is for.





	[META] Getting to an non-hierarchical Aziraphale-Crowley relationship

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted and lightly edited (including figuring out how to make the footnotes work) from [my dreamwidth account](http://mecurtin.dreamwidth.org/), which is mostly locked.

[stellar_dust](https://stellar-dust.dreamwidth.org) wrote a great post on [Relationship imbalance in Good Omens fic: A Meta](https://stellar-dust.dreamwidth.org/458826.html), in which she said:

> In just about every A/C fic, regardless of whether they’re friends, or in an asexual relationship, or fucking constantly, or married, or spending 60k words trying to work out just what they are, or whatever -- there’s almost always at least a tiny little whiff of imbalance. I don’t quite want to say power imbalance, but maybe status imbalance? To the extent that Aziraphale is nearly always, even just the tiniest barely-there unconscious bit, held higher than Crowley just because he never experienced the Fall. Sometimes it’s explicit in the text, sometimes in one or both of their inner monologues, sometimes only really subtly there in the particular word choices the author uses. 

I agree that this is true.

She then said:

> Isn’t part of the point, though, that they both like being who they are, even if both Head Offices are a bit rubbish? That they are in fact balanced? That Hell may have split from Heaven, but that breakup was part of the ineffable plan, and Hellish things don’t automatically have to be corrupt or bad just because God said so?

Here I disagree. [the following is the long version of a comment I'm leaving on her post] Note that I am talking here about the TV series, specifically.

What we see in canon is that Hell, as an institution, is in fact just what it says on the tin: horrible, cruel, and smells bad. It's Heaven that's the problem, because what it says on the tin is "Good, not like that nasty Hell" and what's inside is horrible & cruel, even though it smells nice.

Heaven & Hell, in Good Omens, are two siblings in a dysfunctional, abusive family. Hell (& the Fallen angels) are the Bad Children, who act Bad and then are told they're irredeemably Bad, and who are used as an object lesson to control the Good Children.

Crowley is messed up because he's been hurt physically/psychically/spiritually, and he KNOWS it's not right but he still has a lot of internalized self-hatred.

Aziraphale is messed up because he's so, so afraid that he's "really" a Bad Child, because his status as a Good Child is always conditional. But while he's being a Good Child he really does get nicer emotional things than Crowley does, he gets a true sense of love. That's why he has more of a character arc (in TV-canon, at least): he rejects Crowley SO MANY TIMES omg, before he makes his choice. 

Whereas Crowley never rejects Aziraphale: his heart knows its own true north from VERY early on, fanonically from the wall of Eden. So while Crowley is the designated Bad Child, he's been the more loving person in their relationship; Aziraphale, the Good Child, has in fact been hurtful and capricious. [1]

So while I think stellar_dust is right that we SHOULD be aiming at an egalitarian Happily Ever After for them (wherever they are on the sexuality scale), it doesn't seem to me that they're there are at the end of Episode 6. Aziraphale+Crowley have cut ties with most of their abusive family (yay), but they haven't done the work to unlearn the toxic habits of thought it gave them.

In addition, by Christian premises Aziraphale, as an Unfallen Angel, is still plugged in to a sense of Divine love while Crowley has had that ripped out of him. Spiritual or metaphysical intercourse will have Aziraphale essentially "topping", pouring his+Divine love into Crowley to heal that wound. A lot of fan writers have definitely latched onto this, which is not directly contradicted by canon. 

To get them to an egalitarian HEA they both have to change after canon is over. Either Crowley _and his relationship to God_ have to recover enough to restore that sense of Divine love, or Aziraphale has to walk away from his dysfunctional parent _and Her love_.  And it's always harder to cut ties with a toxic family when you're the designated Good Child than when you're the designated Bad Child. [2]

Terry Pratchett would *definitely* write it so that Aziraphale rips out his internal sense of Divine love, walks away from [Omelas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas), and then discovers, as in [_Carpe Jugulum_](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34541.Carpe_Jugulum), that "everywhere I look, I see something holy." The World doesn't need a God in order to love A+C back.

But this is NOT something that's in canon, it's something for us to do. Only fanfic--probably with an Actual Plot™!--can take A+C to a non-hierarchical relationship, where they each truly love themselves as well as each other, and the World.

* * *

[1] It's actually ASTOUNDING that fandom hasn't dragged Aziraphale like a [spring-tooth harrow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring-tooth_harrow) for his many rejections of Crowley. [return to text]

[2] Fortunately for me, my direct personal experience with family dysfunction is limited. But I've lurked on the [Dysfunctional Families](https://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/016632.html#016632) posts at Making Light for many years.[return to text]


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